So is there any real reason why missiles are still utterly useless?

[Soothsayer]

Been this way for as long as I can remember in ED. This video sums up the current state of missiles in Horizons quite nicely, I find:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB1xqfntu7A

I really think missiles could use a fairly substantial buff without throwing anything out of balance. If that's the damage output of dumbfire missiles, I can't even begin to fathom how bad heat seekers would be at scratching the paint of a larger ship, much less inflicting actual damage on it.

 

[DefiledDragon]

Yeah, they're a bit pants atm. It wouldn't be that difficult to balance them, although I feel the mega nerf was FD's answer to the in station dumbfire spam that plagued the game not long after release.

 

[Soothsayer]

Yeah, they're a bit pants atm. It wouldn't be that difficult to balance them, although I feel the mega nerf was FD's answer to the in station dumbfire spam that plagued the game not long after release.

A nerf this bad seems like a statement more than an attempt at balance. Perhaps it's their way of saying "we have absolutely no idea how to balance missiles so that they're viable but not overpowered, so we'll nerf them into the mantle for a while."

 

[dangerousbeans]

Look lovely +go bang bang, but after I tried them out I went back to fixed PA's as secondary weaps, I would of thought they should do more damage, or at least raise the amount you can carry x2.

 

[Soothsayer]

Look lovely +go bang bang, but after I tried them out I went back to fixed PA's as secondary weaps, I would of thought they should do more damage, or at least raise the amount you can carry x2.

Raising the ammunition count of missiles by any degree wouldn't matter. They could have an infinite amount of ammunition -- their hull and shield damage would still be pathetic, and that's on top of the fact that they're bad at subsystem targeting. There's simply no place for missiles. They have no reason to exist, as their effective DPS and TTK (time to kill) against enemy vessels is atrociously bad compared to weapons of comparable size. Why in the world would you equip incredibly slow-moving missiles when you can shred something much faster at close range with PAs or fragment cannons?

 

[Troa Barton]

I didn't see how they were overpowered when they were good.
fit a couple PDTs and you were good. Add PDTs to stations and the griefer spam wouldn't be an issue.
i see zero reason why they should be as bad as they are. High price, low ammo, high power draw (for whatever reason)
missiles were fine before they just didn't have the proper station defences in place to prevent the outcry.
the only part of the nerf I can agree with is the module damage and damage vs shields. But damage to hull should be insane, as for torps even more damage to hull and give them an adequate armor pen value.

 

[Soothsayer]

I didn't see how they were overpowered when they were good.
fit a couple PDTs and you were good. Add PDTs to stations and the griefer spam wouldn't be an issue.
i see zero reason why they should be as bad as they are. High price, low ammo, high power draw (for whatever reason), awful damage to hull.
missiles were fine before they just didn't have the proper station defences in place to prevent the outcry.
the only part of the nerf I can agree with is the module damage and damage vs shields. But damage to hull should be insane, as for torps even more damage to hull and give them an adequate armor pen value.

Fixed your post for ya. I suppose FDev have to take into consideration PvP and PvE balance, and it's probably somewhat difficult to balance weapons along the lines of missiles around two fundamentally different platforms. Perhaps they should just bite the bullet and change damage values so that missiles more effective against AI, thereby implementing a sort of quasi-resilience system into the game. As sketchy as that would obviously be, the only alternatives would be to either come up with a brilliant solution or scrap the weapon from a fundamental, conceptual perspective, removing it entirely from the game. Having such utterly useless weapons in the game as weapon loadout choices kind of hurts the credibility of the game.

I'm especially disappointed by pack hound missiles, given how aesthetically brilliant they are. They'd be perfect for my flying fortress of death. Alas.

 

[DefiledDragon]

Torpedoes would be useful, if you could carry more than 2. I tried torps in one of my builds and I was both surprised and encouraged by the hull damage, particularly against larger ships but the ammo count of just 2 made my head want to explode. Why? Just why? World War II submarines carried more than that for crying out loud. These are spacecraft that we're flying, we leave station and head out into the black, sometimes for months at a time. The galaxy is a dangerous place and no sane designer of weapons for a craft that could theoretically be away from "civilization" for months would design a weapon that you could only fire twice. It's insane, it really is, it baffles me completely. Can you imagine the Enterprise, or for that matter any starfleet vessel only carrying 2 photon torpedoes? Sigh...

 

[Troa Barton]

Fixed your post for ya. I suppose FDev have to take into consideration PvP and PvE balance, and it's probably somewhat difficult to balance weapons along the lines of missiles around two fundamentally different platforms. Perhaps they should just bite the bullet and change damage values so that missiles more effective against AI, thereby implementing a sort of quasi-resilience system into the game. As sketchy as that would obviously be, the only alternatives would be to either come up with a brilliant solution or scrap the weapon from a fundamental, conceptual perspective, removing it entirely from the game. Having such utterly useless weapons in the game as weapon loadout choices kind of hurts the credibility of the game.

I'm especially disappointed by pack hound missiles, given how aesthetically brilliant they are. They'd be perfect for my flying fortress of death. Alas.

im not really for having different values for players and npcs. I'd like to see explosive resistance added to the armor and HRPs then PvP can have a counter measure. PDTs, shields, upgraded armor, and HRP should work together to provide counter measures to missiles. Counter measures, not immunity is the name of the game.
missiles and torps should be scary, the Colt or brass knuckles of space combat.

 

[Ransurias]

A nerf this bad seems like a statement more than an attempt at balance. Perhaps it's their way of saying "we have absolutely no idea how to balance missiles so that they're viable but not overpowered, so we'll nerf them into the mantle for a while."

Well, there's your answer. We all know missiles are obviously completely useless, but if they're any better than they currently are, the PvP players will say that they're being griefed by missile spammers. That's the reason Frontier nerfed them and left them alone ever since. There's no way to make them both useful and balanced without making them overpowered or similar to other weapons.

 

[X-Terminator]

It would add too much fun and that is just not allowed due to the shorter euphoric period wearing off fast and therefore losing further interest in longevity. But it would be FUN! Better to have had FUN than no FUN at all!

 

[LameoveR]

Missiles just need some damage diminishing in PvP

 

[ronin516]

It was all the people complaining. That's FD's BIGGEST problem. They read to much into the whining players and take the wrong advise from the wrong side of the forums. Everytime people complain about something acrually working they nurf the crap out of it. It won't be long before we don't have an actual game to play.

 

[GluttonyFang]

I am very much in support of a mega buff to missiles/torpedo

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It was all the people complaining. That's FD's BIGGEST problem. They read to much into the whining players and take the wrong advise from the wrong side of the forums. Everytime people complain about something acrually working they nurf the crap out of it. It won't be long before we don't have an actual game to play.

Someone who actually have been monitoring the trend and is willing to point it out despite the incoming rage...

What valor...

*Chuckles in the background*

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Missiles just need some damage diminishing in PvP

No, balancing PvP and PvE differently just makes the gap even further and fragment the community even further.

Also, they are pretty much utterly useless in PvP other than the torpedo being slightly useful in extreme situations.

Two full racks of packhound should only do 1% hull damage on a Viper MkIV, tell me what's wrong here...

 

[GluttonyFang]

Fixed your post for ya. I suppose FDev have to take into consideration PvP and PvE balance, and it's probably somewhat difficult to balance weapons along the lines of missiles around two fundamentally different platforms. Perhaps they should just bite the bullet and change damage values so that missiles more effective against AI, thereby implementing a sort of quasi-resilience system into the game. As sketchy as that would obviously be, the only alternatives would be to either come up with a brilliant solution or scrap the weapon from a fundamental, conceptual perspective, removing it entirely from the game. Having such utterly useless weapons in the game as weapon loadout choices kind of hurts the credibility of the game.

Making PvP and PvE balance just creates even further of a gap between the two, which you know, the recent SCB "balancing" was suppose to close the gap. (Ineffective attempt if you ask me, but I guess it is still an attempt)

Making this sort of precedence will create many issues than it solves.

 

[Fendalton]

The only thing missiles are good for is by thinking people have torpedoes incoming, or for recording video footage.

 

[Soothsayer]

In completely unrelated news, I just soloed 8 Vultures at an SSS in my Anaconda just now.

...Before dying en route to a station, since I lost my canopy in the process and couldn't make it in time.

Anywho, I think a ~25% buff to hull damage, a modest increase in rate of fire once locked, and a substantial increase in ammunition would be a nice buff for (heat seeker) missiles. I'm not really sure how to balance dumbfires, aside from just drastically increasing their damage and perhaps adding a bit more shield damage. As a concession for the PvP crowd, perhaps the initial lockon timer should be longer, and perhaps it should warn other players that they're being locked (before the lock is actually complete) to give them time to make evasive maneuvers.

 

[Surly_Badger]

So is there any real reason why missiles are still utterly useless?

Because if they weren't, the game would become endless missile spamming and endless whining about missile spammers. The whining would be so intolerable that the heavens would split open, dogs and cats would get married, large objects like pianos would fall upward, and people would stop playing Star Citizen.

Joking aside: nerfing missiles was the only option because, really, realistically, self-propelled, self-navigating projectiles are vastly more lethal than ballistic weapons (also much more expensive). In a real world where money actually matters, people will occasionally use cheaper stuff but in a game where money is infinite and easily grindable, everyone would never fire anything except the most lethal (and expensive) projectile: high velocity nuclear homing missiles. And, realistically, the AI in those things would be like Hunter S Thompson's love child by John Boyd: it would simply scrape you instantly, no saving throw, no prayer of salvation.

So, missiles are useless.

Because otherwise there wouldn't be much game. The only fun we'd have is in the forums.

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[TigerTen]

What it should be ...View attachment 93729View attachment 93730View attachment 93731View attachment 93732View attachment 93733 That holds 300 0n an CL about a size of a Anaconda ...

 

[Soothsayer]

For realistic balancing purposes, I think anywhere from ~48 - 60 missiles sounds reasonable. 7 - 9 reloads instead of 1 sounds passable for casual RES hunting without being too over the top.